§ Statement of Purpose

The View from 1776 presents a framework to understand present-day issues from the viewpoint of the colonists who fought for American independence in 1776 and wrote the Constitution in 1787. Knowing and preserving those understandings, what might be called the unwritten constitution of our nation, is vital to preserving constitutional government. Without them, the bare words of the Constitution are just a Rorschach ink-blot that politicians, educators, and judges can interpret to mean anything they wish.

"We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams, to the Officers of the First Brigade, Third Division, Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798.

§ American Traditions

§ People and Ideas

§ Decline of Western Civilization: a Snapshot

§ Books to Read

§ BUY MY BOOK

Saturday, October 09, 2004

John Kerry: Prattling Pontificator of Poltroonery

I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up. The dictionary defines poltroon as a base coward.

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Earlier (The “Global Test:” a Leftist Luminary Takes Issue) I had said that Senator Kerry’s doctrine of the “global test” sets such high standards for military action that effectively he is a pacifist.? His position might be summed up as ?Speak loudly, but never use a big stick.?

Friday night’s second debate reminded us that there is an exception. Senator Kerry would never hesitate to use the club of big government to smash the skull of a defenseless infant in the grisly procedure known as partial birth abortion.

On the one hand, liberals like Kerry insist that there be no American military action without first enduring months, or even years, of diplomatic wrangling in the UN. They insist that world opinion and the sanction of the so-called community of nations are required to legitimize actions to protect our national security. On the other hand, liberals blithely sanction a so-called Constitutional right for any woman to murder her innocent baby without even a gesture in the direction of legal due process to establish medical necessity.

Under the Kerry doctrine, Saddam Hussein had more rights than our own unborn children. Under liberal-socialism, unborn babies are the only social class that have no First Amendment or Fourteenth Amendment rights.

How do we explain these contradictory positions?

Socialism, the secular religion of American liberals, has two basic dogmas that apply. First, as became apparent when World War I was about to commence in 1914, liberals looked to solidarity with the workers of the world and regarded wars as selfish and greedy actions by fat-cat Big Businessmen for their own enrichment, at the expense of the workers. This is the principle that led to the formation of the ACLU in 1916 and 1917 to defend liberals who engaged in sabotaging American preparations to enter the war on the side of Great Britain and France. This is the principle that brings hordes of protesters into the streets of Manhattan and the cities of Europe. This is the principle that underlies liberals’ faith in collective security through the UN.

Second, liberals historically advocated what used to be called free love and is today the general practice of sexual promiscuity. They did so, believing that marriage and the traditional family interfered with loyalty to the social class.

Liberals promote class-conscious social grouping. That was the whole point of John Dewey’s Progressive “education for democracy.” Individualistic traditions of morality and personal responsibility, on which our nation was founded, are attacked as right-wing radicalism.

As recently as the 1960s, liberals didn’t hesitate to connect the dots. One of John Kerry’s Vietnam-era anti-war collaborators, a leader in the underground Weatherman group, put it bluntly. In “A Strategy To Win,” Bill Ayers wrote in 1969, “??we?re going to bring the war home, we?re going to create class war in the streets and institutions of this country, and we?re going to make them pay a price.??people have come to see the need to build collectives that can fight, the need to build collectives that are strong and tough, and in order to do that a lot of individualism has to be worked out of every one of us.??”

Sexual promiscuity and marital infidelity are virtues in Slick Willie’s Hollywood, whose support Senator Kerry is happy to accept.

Ed Koch, New York City’s former mayor and a life-long Democrat, wrote on Wednesday, July 14, 2004, “On Friday, July 9, the Kerry-Edwards campaign held a fund-raising concert at Radio City Music Hall. By general agreement - I was not there - several of the performers, Whoopi Goldberg in particular, engaged in unprintable sexual references to President Bush, combining the president?s family name with references to the female anatomy. They did the same with Vice President Dick Cheney?s first name, this time referring to the male anatomy.

Both John Kerry and John Edwards were present in the theater and sitting through the crude, obscene attacks without protest and, I assume, applauded generously each of these performers. At the end of the show, Kerry and Edwards appeared on stage and Kerry thanked all of the performers, saying they conveyed “the heart and soul of our country.” “